I Swear I Don't Work for the Chamber of Commerce

So, earlier this week, I had to drive to Ohio to get a copy of my driver's record to submit for my Bar application. I didn't particularly want to do this, but, well...
So of course, I whined and wheedled my girlfriends until one of them agreed to go with me. I figured we'd mosey over, stop in at the BMV, then get "breakfast" at IHOP, and mosey on back. Just a little road trip with good tunes on the radio and a nice conversation.

We headed out mid morning and the weather was nice for the drive: sunny and cool, so I didn't need to turn on my non-functioning AC and the car windows could stay rolled up. We were so busy yapping about selling passports on the black market (not, mind you, because either of us has plans to do so, but rather in the context of illegal immigration and changes to the U.S. Passports in the last ten years to make it more difficult to forge and alter them), that I drove right past the exit, resulting in a twenty mile detour, which wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't need to use the bathroom so incredibly badly. I honestly thought I might have to pull over to the side of the road for a while there. It turned out to be okay, though, because when we finally made to the exit, the first place to pull over turned out to be a Dairy Queen, which meant, of course, that we had to get ice cream.

Back in the car, we headed into town. When I originally talked Death into going with me, she told me that she'd never been to Ohio before and was excited to see it, to which I replied "Honey, we're not going to the nice part of Ohio." (And upon hearing this story, Ash replied "There's a nice part of Ohio?", which prompted me to bite him.) And at first, Boardman seemed to fulfill my expectations. But then we kept seeing more and more cute little shops and interesting buildings.

I stopped at the BMV, which, as seems to be the case across the state, was located in a strip mall. We were in and out in about three minutes, and I was mildly amused that the paper was only half a page long and had no entries on it at all. Not that I was surprised, because I am a very good driver, despite all of Finbar's mouthing. Being the type of people that we are, we decided to duck into the Dollar Store up the way from the BMV. BEST.DOLLAR.STORE.EVER! There was so much great stuff there, I wasn't sure if I could keep enough cash to pay for tolls on the way home. We finally cut ourselves off, paid, and got back in the car, headed for IHOP. And kept passing great store after great store! I'm telling you, there was better shopping there than at the local outlet malls. One funny thing, though, was that there were bridal shops everywhere. I bet we passed eight of them in four miles. We wondered if it's kind of a "cottage industry" for Boardman.

We stuffed ourselves silly with pancakes and french toast, then struggled back to the car just as it started to rain. It was almost like the city was sad to see us go. We're totally planning to go back and spend more money we don't have, as soon as we can get the time to road trip again. And next time the Dirty Birdie can't bail on us.